Crossing over—will we be standing at a dory's prow,clouds cooperating grandly in the background,profiles like captains charting the Passage,new moon, ice floes, capes?

Pass awaylike an unlucky dynastyor a craze for snuff bottles,our lives no thicker than a snowflake?

A little folding of the hands to sleep—straw hat tipped over my nose,I'm dozing to the lilac's inquisitive wrens;you, your spade flung aside,sprawl, just starting to snore.

It's curtains for us,clasping hands behind the dusty, still-swaying swag—at last these doublets can come off,the swipes of rouge and sideburns, then we'll strollto greet the flashing city with our true faces.

Let's sleep with the fish—yellow tangs flocking like suns,eels with Sid Caesar eyeseasing into a Romanesque coral-arch.

It's the end of the line,the train nudges its way to the platform's edge,we're the only two in the graffiti-swirled carsoft-shoeing down the gum-gobbed aisle.

And yes, let's buy the farm—the loft's tucked full of hay,the combines are waiting,here is your morning basket of fresh eggs.

Viullard Interior

Against brown walls, the servant bendsover the coverlet she mends—brown hair, brown flocking, a dun handunder the lamp, the servant bendsover the coverlet she mendsdraped across her broad brown skirts;knotting, nodding, the servant blendsinto the coverlet she mends.

4.For an August Figaro, she lobbed her noteswith the chorus's into a pink-swirled sky.

5.The viola part she played at her quartet's recitalwas carried home that night, by a whistling couple.

6.His winged saint, like a nuthatch inching down a pillar(fourteenth century, "from the workshop of")survived in one corner of a dim museumopen twice weekly at the curator's discretion.

7.The red scalloped tails of the kissing birdsshe'd inked on the baptismal scripfor that Mennonite child, April 1810,were admired again when a grizzled farmer, rummaging in his great-uncle's cabinet,unrolled them, presented them to the county seat.

8.One poem he wrote was glanced at by a studentriffling through a book, looking for something else,in the clammy stacks of her college library;like a purple lupine by a hiker's dusty boot,it pleased her and refreshed her, before she trudged on.

Litany

Extinction can be documented only for species known to have existed in the first place — and only when an observer has noted their passing. Because at most only 10% of the species suspected to be living on earth have been identified, it is certain that many more species have become extinct in the past than are listed here